Gold foil was used to help scientists determine if the Idaho National Laboratory’s (INL) NRAD neutron beam still meets national standards after its nuclear reactor received upgrades, Joe Campbell of INL reports.

“We wanted to make sure we still met ASTM’s Category I standard after the core upgrade, but we realized that other researchers wishing to conduct examinations here would find a precise map of the beam’s intensity very useful. Testing with an array of gold foil targets was the best way to do that,” said INL postdoc researcher Aaron Craft.

Gold is the best material for the job because of its short half-life and “how it reacts to exposure to the neutron flux in a reactor.”

“Gold as it is found in nature—gold-197—contains no traces of its radioactive isotopes. But, when exposed to a neutron beam, a small percentage of a given sample of gold will turn to gold-198, which has a half-life of 2.7 days.”

“The percentage of gold-198 created is directly proportional to the intensity of the neutron beam that hits each sample in the array. Using the half-life of 2.7 days for gold-198, and the data from the sample counts done in MFC’s Analytical Lab, I then have everything I need to create a precise map of NRAD’s beam intensity,” Craft explained. “Such a map can help attract other researchers who need to examine or test samples after exposure to a neutron flux that matches NRAD’s profile.”

The recent slump in gold prices may have spurred some miners to consider hedging their gold sales, but the vast majority has so far resisted doing so because they expect gold prices will recover and they want full exposure to these gains.

Spot gold has fallen 21% since the year began, prompting gold miners such as Russia-focused Petropavlovsk PLC (POG.LN) and Tanzania gold explorer Shanta Gold Ltd. (SHG.LN) to hedge, locking in a portion of their future gold sales at a fixed price to manage their cashflows amid a weaker gold price environment.

For Petropavlovsk, which locked in prices for about half of its production until June 2014, the move is aimed at managing its debt burden. Shanta Gold has hedged gold sales equivalent to nearly half of this year’s forecast gold output until March 2014, to help cover its debt and capital expenditure requirements as it carries out a five-year plan for gold production growth.

Such moves may make sense for those companies, but investors generally prefer to hold shares in gold companies with full exposure to any potential rise in the price of gold.

Gold miners risk losing money on hedges if they lock in their revenues for the long term at a fixed rate, but fail to control their costs in a similar fashion, Ms. Raw said.

The gold industry suffered heavily over the past decade when many large gold miners hedged their sales following a prolonged period of low gold prices only to see the prices take off and mining costs rise. Several large gold miners spent billions of dollars trying to unwind hedges that became a drag on profits over that period. Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX), the world’s largest gold producer, was the last large gold producer to unwind its hedges when it raised $5.1 billion in 2009 to buy them back.

Gold miners would have to be certain that the industry has entered a structural price decline before they broadly return to gold hedging, said Ms. Raw, but “that is not our view.” The downside risk to the current gold price is limited, as jewelry demand is robust and gold supplies are scarce, she added.

Gold producers are also reacting to the low gold price by shutting down unprofitable mines. Mark Bristow, chief executive of West African gold producer Randgold Resources Ltd. (GOLD), said last week he reckons that more than half of the industry’s gold output is unprofitable at the current gold price.

That said, Angelos Damaskos, CEO of Sector Investment Managers Ltd., which advises the Junior Gold Fund on $25 million worth of investment in 38 gold companies, said he believes the gold price has hit a floor and will rebound in the second half of this year. The gold price could even reach its previous record high of $1,920.94 a troy ounce, set in September 2011, by sometime next year, he said.

Although talk about hedging is creeping in among small to medium-size gold miners, investors and miners say it hasn’t yet become pervasive. On the contrary, a recent J.P. Morgan Chase survey found 61% of investors were still against miners hedging gold prices.

Gold producers continued to unwind their hedges in the second quarter following net dehedging in the first quarter, said precious metals consultant Thomson ReutersGFMS and Societe Generale bank in a jointly produced report.

GFMS and Societe Generale expect net de-hedging to prevail over the rest of the year, since gold producers may believe they have missed the opportunity to hedge at a lower price.

Gold sank to nearly a three-year low of $1,180.20 an ounce in June, but has since rebounded to $1,324.70/oz.

Gold Stock Analyst is two newsletters that make it simple for investors to own a portfolio of the best Gold stocks. Published twice a month since 1994 by a former Professor of Economics and Finance (Bentley College in Waltham, MA), GSA focuses on the 70 Gold and Silver miners that have ounces that meet the US Security and Exchange Commission’s strict report- ing standard for Proven and Probable Reserves. From those meeting this test, GSA crunches numbers, dissects SEC filings, visits mines, talks and visits with management.

All this searching for the Top 10 Stocks… those that are undervalued and have the potential to double in the next 18 to 24 months, assuming no change in Gold’s price. In today’s era of $10 internet trades, the transaction cost to buy 10 stocks is trivial… even if Gold is only 10% of your total portfolio.

Ten stocks is the right number for this volatile sector. It’s a small enough so a big gain in one will have major impact on the total portfolio… one stock doubling boosts the portfolio by 10%. Yet ten is large enough that even if one fell 50%, it would cut the portfolio’s total value by just 5%.

Additionally, the discipline of 10 stocks means a new stock must be seen to have better upside than the current members of the Top 10. Since we seek undervalued stocks that can double at the current Gold price, the “better upside” is a high hurdle and gives the discipline needed to achieve superior results.

Artists and craftsmen more than 2,000 years ago developed thin-film coating technology unrivaled even by today’s standards for producing DVDs, solar cells, electronic devices and other products. Understanding these sophisticated metal-plating techniques from ancient times, described in the ACS journal Accounts of Chemical Research, could help preserve priceless artistic and other treasures from the past.

Gabriel Maria Ingo and colleagues point out that scientist have made good progress in understanding the chemistry of many ancient artistic and other artifacts — crucial to preserve them for future generations. Big gaps in knowledge remained, however, about how gilders in the Dark Ages and other periods applied such lustrous, impressively uniform films of gold or silver to intricate objects. Ingo’s team set out to apply the newest analytical techniques to uncover the ancients’ artistic secrets.

They discovered that gold- and silversmiths 2,000 years ago developed a variety of techniques, including using mercury like a glue to apply thin films of metals to statues and other objects. Sometimes, the technology was used to apply real gold and silver. It also was used fraudulently, to make cheap metal statues that look like solid gold or silver. The scientists say that their findings confirm “the high level of competence reached by the artists and craftsmen of these ancient periods who produced objects of an artistic quality that could not be bettered in ancient times and has not yet been reached in modern ones.

The world’s economy is in tatters and safe havens are few and far between, says legendary contrarian Marc Faber. The banking crisis in Cyprus has shown that even bank deposits are not safe. The publisher of the Doom, Boom and Gloom newsletter, surveying the world from his perch in Hong Kong, discusses the impact of unemployment in Europe, the economic slowdown in China, asset bubbles and the turnaround prospects for precious metals miners. Faber also reveals his investment strategy for these volatile times in this interview with The Gold Report.

The Gold Report: Marc, I recently interviewed James Turk who said that Europe is in a banking crisis, but that some countries are in worse shape than others. Are things on the continent as bad as they seem to be from the headlines in the U.S.?

Marc Faber: Unemployment is high in both Europe and the U.S., particularly for young people. One reason for the high unemployment rate is that it is very difficult to find highly specialized workers for industry. Perhaps that’s due to more university students studying non-user-friendly subjects, such as philosophy. The Western world is lacking in well-trained workers who can handle industrial machines that cost $10–20 million ($10–20M). But if I need a clerical assistant for financial services, I can find hundreds and hundreds of applicants.

Swiss-born Marc Faber, who at age 24 earned his Ph.D. in economics magna ***** laude from the University of Zurich, has lived in Hong Kong nearly 40 years. He worked in New York, Zurich and Hong Kong for White Weld & Co., an investment bank historically managed by Boston Brahmins until its sale to Merrill Lynch in 1978. From 1978 to 1990, Faber served as managing director of Drexel Burnham Lambert (HK), setting up his own investment advisory and fund management firm, Marc Faber Ltd. in mid-1990. His widely read monthly investment newsletter Gloom Boom & Doom Report highlights unusual investment opportunities. Faber is also the author of several books, including Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s Age of Discovery (2002), which spent several weeks on Amazon’s bestseller list and is being translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai and German. He also contributes regularly to leading financial publications around the world. Much also has been written about Faber. Nury Vittachi, one of Asia’s most popular writers and speakers, published Riding the Millennial Storm: Marc Faber’s Path to Profit in the Financial Markets (1998). The Financial Times of London described him as “something of an icon” and Fortune called him a “congenital contrarian and shrewd Swiss investment advisor.”

The increasing price of precious metals has prompted mineral prospectors to consider unusual places. Jon Evans looks into the future of mining.

Mining is already a reasonably extreme activity, moving and processing large quantities of material in often unpleasant and hazardous conditions. But imagine how much more extreme it would be to mine at the bottom of the ocean or on asteroids in the depths of space. That is exactly what a few pioneering companies are planning to do.

The impetus for these extreme forms of mining is the recent dramatic rises in the price of many metals, driven by dwindling supplies from conventional land-based sources and by large increases in demand outstripping available supply. This is the case for bulk metals such as copper, nickel and cobalt, precious metals such as gold and platinum, and the so-called rare earth elements such as lanthanum and neodymium that are used in many modern technologies.

Since 2000, the price of copper has quadrupled and the price of platinum has tripled. The rare earth elements have collectively increased in price by a factor of 20 since 2005. This all means that potential sources of these metals that were previously dismissed as too far-fetched, such as the ocean floor and asteroids, have now become economically viable – at least theoretically.

Indeed, the mineral resources potentially available on the ocean floor and in asteroids are quite staggering. It has been estimated that an area of sediment just 1km2 at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii contains enough rare earths to meet one-fifth of global annual demand, while a single platinum-rich 500m-wide asteroid could yield around 1.5 times the known global reserves of platinum group metals.

But even though the economics of extracting metals from the ocean floor and asteroids may now be more favorable, the technical obstacles remain substantial. Despite lots of planning, no deep-sea mining operations have yet been undertaken, and the necessary technologies for asteroid mining have not even been developed. The potential environmental costs could be also being high: deep-sea mining may cause major disruption to ocean habitats, while asteroid mining could cause one to crash into the Earth.